Loveless

I still can't to this day.

Well, I went out and tracked down 'Loveless', I ended up getting it on the net, but when it finally arrived, it totally changed my slant on music. 'Loveless' is a hazy, dream-inducing wave of sound, with irresistable melodies, interwoven with barely there vocals, and pulsing drums. I had never heard such use of the electric guitar until I heard My Bloody Valentine...Kevin Shields rather than Matt Bellamy is my guitar idol now, and always will be. Nothing really seems adequate in comparison with this, not these days. Maybe other 80s greats such as The J&MC, The Pixies, The Cure, and others can (especially Disintegration, Robert Smiths masterpiece)...but until someone creates music that can make you tap your foot, whilst drifting off (Soon), music that can deafen you and make you smile (Only Shallow), and music that can take you to a different world alltogether (To Here Knows When), then 'Loveless' will have to do.

Someone once said in a review that 'Loveless' is like being back in the womb...but if it is, then I'm a Buddhist being reincarnated, because I can still feel heaven...

The template for this kind of angular noise-rock had already been set with the Marry Chain's classic Psychocady in 1985 (and, to a lesser extent, the first Sonic Youth album), with MBV quick to respond and advance on that sound with their own career-year-zero, Isn't Anything (1988)... With that album, guitarist/songwriter/vocalist Kevin Shields emerged as the band's nucleus, steering MBV away from the twee, indie-pop sound that their early EP's seemed to be suggesting, with the band, on the whole, setting the precedent for ambient white noise and swathes of industrial feedback. So, whereas the first album seemed to be rooted very much in the experimental category, Loveless would instead take the concept of feedback and severe noise and anchor it with a sense of structure, harmony, and, an intense & beautiful approach to atmosphere. The notion that Shields was trying to express was the combination of the aforementioned musical styles, largely inspired by guitarists like Hendrix and (early) Jimmy Paige, with the free-form approach to sound-textures that were becoming more apparent through the rise of acid-house.

As a result of this, Loveless has a seesawing sound that is both loved up (like acid house) and threatening (like post-punk)... giving the listener an idea of what it must be like to take ecstasy whilst simultaneously dropping acid (...not to mention, falling down Alice's rabbit hole, into wonderland!). This whole concept is most apparent in the opening track, Only Shallow, which suggests a multitude of aural possibilities, as well as featuring as one of the greatest album introductions of all time. Here, Shields lays down a swirling, pulsating guitar melody, which dances ethereally from one speaker to the other, as Belinda Butcher's haunted vocals fuse with the background instrumentation. The sound that is created here is best described as alien-white-noise... a sound that continues right through the record, giving it a sense of cohesion that few albums can equate.

The vocals are sterling throughout, alternating between the feminine coos of Butcher and the hushed-mumbles of Shields, sometimes between tracks, sometime within the same track, whilst bringing to mind people like Malcolm Mooney, Mark Hollis and Thom Yorke (around the time of Kid A/mnesiac), as well as creating a dreamlike grace that is, at times, reminiscent of the very best of the Cocteau Twins (albums like Victorialand, Treasure and so on). Track two, Loomer, advances on this sound, again fusing the vocals of Butcher & Shields against harsh distortions & distant drums (one complaint: why are Colm O'Ciosoig's drums buried so far in the mix?), before track three, an instrumental piece composed by O'Ciosoig, takes the album into forbidden realms of the surreal... complete with strange loops, treatments and samples; which creates a piece of music that sounds like someone being trampled by a herd of stampeding elephants. From here the album lulls out, and Shields begins to take more control over the sound, giving us tons of that dense guitar work and some heavenly vocals (...though I don't have a clue what he's singing about).

As a result of this, When You Sleep, I Only Said, Sometimes and the closing number, Soon, remain amongst my favourite songs of the decade, with Shields and the rest of the band (including some great treated bass from Debbie Googe) creating a series of blissed-out songs that are meant to wash over the listener, whilst simultaneously offering a disturbed and disconcerting experience. This is rock music as it should be done: dense without being pretentious; experimental, though played to perfection... whilst the atmosphere that the band create is just unbelievable. It was the discovery of this band, and tracks like the ones noted above, that really turned me off bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, with My Bloody Valentine proving just how obsolete Billy Corgan's six-form navel-gazing was, by the time that particular band achieved what they believed to be perfection.

Shields had proved that acid-house and guitar rock could easily be combined to create a strange and dislocating texture to lift the music beyond the realms of the top-40, and was even capable of conveying emotion without relying on the usual song-writing clichés. As his contributions to last year's Lost in Translation soundtrack ably demonstrated, Shields can still create those buzzing, dreamlike sound-scapes from the comfort of his secluded country-retreat, far better than the likes of Mogwai, Mum, Sigur Ros, and GSYBE! Could this be a sign of new MBV material appearing sometime in the near future? Let's hope so.

and you gotta know, that Loveless is one of these albums.

Monolithic and monsterous it may initially remind the listener unfamiar with experimental guitar music, of riding a train through a tunnel whilst wearing a pair of hearing aids that have been cranked up to the max, but after a short while the shimmering forms hinted at in the melee will reveal themselves to be glistering melodies, the tightly structured nuggets of pop perfection. Fragile and ethereal vocals, (employed more for texture; low in the mix, breathy and open vowel-sounds) surf on voluminous waves of haywire guitar, everything swelling, cascading and rolling as if Neptune himself was having a slightly frenetic sly-one off the wrist.

Kickstarting a whole subgenre in the early 90's, lending mopey indierockers the technique of reverse reverb and the brand of shoegazing, this album was never surpassed by the likes of the Boo Radleys, Curve, Slowdive, House of Love, Chapterhouse and Lush (superb as many of these bands were) Loveless remained aloof from the oevre it spawned, untouchable. Alan McGhee the boss of creation records dubbed Shields 'the 20th century's Stravinsky' and was called upon to demonstrate his admiration as the cost of recording the album spiralled to around £250,000 forcing McGhee to flog 49% of the company to foot the bill. This kind of legend-fostering trivia is indicative of the mythology that grew around MBV after this albums release, girded by Shields' elusive and perfectionist nature.

This is smoother and more fully realised than MBV's other album on Creation, 'Isn't Anything', which is a rawer affair, lo-fi and trebley but with the same luminous and otherwordly quality. Slightly more rockist, with traces of Dinosaur Jr. 'Isn't Anything' decidely darker in its lyrical themes and atmosphere. For the same lush closely-orchestrated sound of loveless the 'Glider e.p.' (with Soon as the title track) is recommended.

Shields is steeped in influence as diverse as Arthur Lee's psychedelic legends Love, the rockabilly punk stomp of the Cramps' and ethereal aural goldenshowers of dream pop contemporaries the Cocteau Twins but he didn't really follow the recipe and the cake turned out wrong, so gloriously wrong in the crazy oven of Shields' mind.

go on, i dare you try a piece.

(Kevin Shield's hasn't released anything proper for over 10 years (odds and sods including substandard remixes for the likes of the Pastels and Yo La Tengo) and can now be seen triggering samples like an opiated monkey for Primal Scream.)